


impossible magic

by royalgreen (allyoop)



Series: Fictober 2020 [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Chains, Dehydration, Denial of Feelings, Dissociation, Fictober, Handcuffs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pain, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Prison, Whump, Whumptober, events take place some time after episode 97
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:42:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27055879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyoop/pseuds/royalgreen
Summary: Essek is captured by an enemy that does not underestimate him. His magic is now completely blocked and all hope is gone.And yet.....someone hears him. Someone comes.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Series: Fictober 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954570
Comments: 10
Kudos: 249





	impossible magic

**Author's Note:**

> fictober prompts: "incantations" mixed with "you are here"

If he died, there would be no coming back. 

It was a secret Essek kept carefully hidden away. It was the reason behind the argument that pushed his father away to a place he didn’t return. His mother must know. There was nothing that escaped her notice and his father had no love enough for his son to keep his secret. But Essek knew his mother was like himself in one important way; she was a master at compartmentalizing information if it could be used.

Right now Essek didn’t really care about whatever political machinations he had inherited. The tiniest whisper of regret was trickling across his consciousness much like the drops of blood that had finally slowed their flow down his forehead. He had woken from unconsciousness held strictly in place by manacles and chains. His arms were pulled taut behind him, mere inches of chain holding his wrists down to the shackles on his ankles. Every link, every piece, every ounce of the metal was heavily enchanted to block any magical escape. Even if Essek had any feeling left in his fingers, he wouldn’t be able to cast.

Sparing no expense, his captors had his neck collared with a thick heavy ring, just tight enough to drag painfully when he tried to swallow. Another enchantment laced through it and he knew if he tried to speak magic it would shock him with lightning. He knew because he had already attempted one desperate incantation. The collar was attached by a short length of chain to the wall behind him, so he wasn’t even able to find relief by lying on the ground without choking himself. He was forced to stay upright, his voice the only boon still left to him, but all his decades of magic rendered useless. 

Essek had long stopped feeling the pain of his legs against the uneven stone floor and he had long lost track of the time. It was more than a week. He had scraped bloody lines on the floor with his knee to keep the time, but after the days kept going and going, he had lost the motivation to bother. No water came. No sustenance. No visitors. But they didn’t want him dead, otherwise he would be already. 

This was calculated torture. They were waiting for him to break. Since his captors had taken the risk of leaving his voice in place, clearly they were hoping for him to give information. Otherwise, why not just slash his throat and be done with him? Perhaps they knew, impossibly somehow they knew Essek only had this current life and to kill him would end the trail of any of his secrets. He could be locked away by an enemy that intimately knew him. And now they were simply waiting. Essek wanted to heroically believe he could last until a rescue came, or perhaps he could overpower his captor, but he knew he was too weak. They had already won when they captured him. 

It was some amorphous time between one week and two when the first visitor came. A bucket of ice cold water was dumped on his head, waking him from a feverish daydream, and he opened his mouth trying to catch whatever drops he still could.

There was a laugh from some distance a few feet away, male or female he couldn’t tell, and then footsteps receding before the slam of a door.

It would be another week before another bucket of water. They were doing the bare minimum to keep him alive. They were waiting. They were patient.

All Essek could do was try and keep his mind. He had lost motivation and strength long ago. If it wasn’t for the collar and chain holding him upright, he would have collapsed many days ago. Essek had to hold grasp onto his mind, the most important part of him, his most  _ powerful _ part. He could not lose this too. He repeated lines of incantations, imagining their sigils and components in his mind's eye, but being careful not to move his mouth. He did not know if anyone was watching or what they were watching for. He started with the first spell he ever learned, testing his memory too, and then worked through each spell variation until he advanced to its final form. And then he would pick the next simple spell, working through each one like a library in his head, keeping his mind occupied. His whole body had surpassed from  _ pain _ into  _ nothingness _ . Essek felt completely detached from anything material around him. All he had was the repetitions of incantations, the words a rhythm in his head that kept his heart beating.

Another ice cold drench of water. It woke him from a fitful sleep, having dozed off somewhere between reciting dunamantic spells. His body protested, the tension against his shackles friction again as the water trickled down. It was a terrible reminder of where he was.

He coughed out his first word spoken since he was brought here. “W-who?” Essek didn’t need to know why.

The voice just laughed again, mirthlessly. He heard the door shut again.

Even though time had completely slipped from him, Essek had come to expect the water that came in a regular pattern.

It did not come that week.

There was something warm and glowing near his legs. His first thought was that perhaps his mental incantations had impossibly broken through the spells on his manacles and a drift globe had materialized. Something small and soft patted his knee. He smelled sulfur. Then there was an earthshaking explosion and the door he assumed was somewhere in this room was knocked down onto the ground. Essek’s eyes were still closed, he barely opened them anymore, but he could still see shocking orange light through his eyelids. Then it dimmed.

He heard scuffling, metal being dragged, multiple footsteps. Something grazed his face, but it was so light it felt like he imagined it. Essek felt the tension of the chains snap and he toppled sideways, suddenly loose from his bonds. Softness caught him instead of the hard stone floor. The last string of fight that had been forcing him to stay awake snapped.

  
  


Essek woke lying down. It felt like the first time in a decade that his body wasn’t twisted into a terrible position. He opened his eyes. It took more strength than he expected to force his eyelids open. He didn’t bother trying to move his limbs. The pain was greatly dulled, but the exhaustion was filling his bones with lead.

He didn’t recognize where he was. The whole room emanated a soft amber glow, the walls a plain ocher paint, the floor a polished wood. Essek tilted his gaze as far as he could and he saw a small nightstand beside him, a pitcher of clear water next to a glass, and several emptied potion bottles beside it. He was in a bed. Someone had  _ found _ him and cured him and tucked him into bed. Essek knew who. As his senses woke up from however long he’s been asleep, he knew. The magic he felt flowing through this entire room told him with certainty. 

_ Caleb _ .

There was a click and a door opened. Essek didn’t turn his head to look, but several footsteps entered. He saw the familiar blue of Jester lean over him.

“Oh my gosh we were getting so worried, it's been  _ days _ , we didn’t know when you would wake up and it’s been kinda crazy having to haul you out and have Caleb recast the Tower and stick you back in and-”

“J-jester.” Essek’s voice felt tight with under-use.

“Yes, that’s me!” She gave him a blinding smile. “You remember! You were kinda delirious when we found you, like you didn’t recognize us and were mumbling spells under your breath. You didn’t cast anything though, I don’t think you had anything left in you.”

Caleb was over her shoulder, looking at Essek with a guarded expression. 

“H-how, there?” Essek asked.

Caleb finished his thought. “We heard you.”

He had so many more questions, but his voice wasn’t cooperating. Jester picked up on this.

“It’s a long story, but I was trying to send  _ you _ a message about Vess, ‘cause we were gonna do this thing for her but there were some crazy red flags and we thought you might’ve heard something, any anyways your reply was super weird. It was like you were whispering on the other side of a door and it was hard to hear you and it didn't even make any sense. Just a couple words in between some long pauses.”

“It was a spell. When Jester repeated the words to us, I recognized it as your Echo spell.”

Essek had no memory of a Message, or doing any magic. The only thing he could imagine was that somehow his repeated incantations had briefly broken through the shackles.

“Well, whatever it was totally made me worry! It was so random and weird for you to respond like that. And then when I scryed it was like a big blank space and then I got booted out from the vision with a painful shove! It was scary enough that I Messaged our housekeeper, gosh I had almost forgotten we had gotten one but thank goodness we did, and had her go look at your house and there were some weirdo guards posted outside who said you were not to be disturbed. But they were totally unconvincing and weird.”

He was barely following the story. The drag of sleep was threatening him again, and nothing felt better than the soft bed he was resting in at the moment. Essek tilted his head to look properly up at Caleb. There were bags under his eyes, nothing new, although they looked darker than he last remembered. There was a mostly healed cut across his cheek and the cuffs of his coat looked dusty black with ash.

“Jester, can you find Caduceus? I think this calls for some tea.”

“Can’t you get one of the cats to-”

“Jester.”

“Okay, fine, fine. I can take a hint.” She winked at Caleb and stepped out the room, closing the door behind her.

Essek kept his eyes open, trying to take in Caleb’s face as the guarded expression was faltering under the weight of  _ something _ happening in his thoughts. Caleb’s arm jerked forward, then paused, but he completed his movement to gently brush a lock of hair from Essek’s forehead.

“I will not ask, because I know the answer will be ‘ _ no I am not okay _ ’.” Caleb gave him a wry smile but then it faded again “We were...We investigated and what we found, or  _ didn’t _ find that is, was disturbing. So many lies so easily spread, and you-” The hand returned to Essek’s face, the lightest sweep of Caleb’s thumb across his cheek. “We were worried.”

Maybe he still had a tinge of delirium, but Essek had to ask. “And you?”

There was the briefest shock in Caleb’s eyes, like he hadn’t expected the question. But Essek had to know. In between the flow of magic words that kept his mind occupied, the daydream ( _ painful, beautiful, impossible _ ) that came to him was the memory of teaching spells to Caleb. Of wanting to teach him more. Of wishing to spend more time with him. Of pursuing that thread of  _ something _ that seemed to keep pulling them back to each other. He had to know.

Caleb leaned over and pressed his lips to Essek’s forehead, familiar yet unfamiliar, the touch feeling much more intimate in this position while alone in the room.

“ _ I _ was worried.” Caleb’s words were a puff of hot breath across his forehead. Then he straightened back up and pulled his hand away.

“Caleb-”

“Do not make me say more.” There was a small smile on his lips, but Caleb’s eyes looked sad.

“Not now...We-,” Essek was really wishing his throat felt less like glass. “Can we talk later?”

There was a noise at the door as the handle turned. Caleb didn’t turn to see who it was and instead kept his gaze on Essek.

“Yes.” He stepped back as Caduceus and Jester walked into the room. “Yes, later.”

Essek was given another cold potion and warm hands of healing, and then he drifted off into unbothered sleep. Whatever they had given him was preventing any restlessness or dreams. However, Essek still found himself chanting a spell to himself as he sank into sleep; it was the first spell he had taught Caleb, its words as familiar and soothing as that memory itself.

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to hold myself accountable for fictober by posting them to ao3 in a timely manner :)
> 
> Thanks for every comment, kudos, and encouragement as always.
> 
> (As always, feel free to follow me on [tumblr](https://caleb-says-nein.tumblr.com/) for more critrole shenanigans)


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